ELDRA SAT IN bewildered silence for some time after Vincent's abrupt departure. Her thoughts drifted back to the events that had brought her here, and for one brief, horrifying moment, she wondered whether accepting Johnas's proposition would truly have been as terrible as she had believed.
The thought vanished almost as quickly as it had come. She straightened, anger replacing the uncertainty.
No.
She knew herself better than that.
Had she invited such a repulsively vile pig into her bed, perhaps she would have avoided being dragged from her cottage by the villagers.
Perhaps she would even have escaped the pyre and the terror of that night, but she would have paid a different price.
She would have been forced to endure Johnas's unwanted caresses, to surrender herself to a man she reviled.
A man who believed his wealth and position gave him ownership over others.
Either way, something inside her would have died.
Her gaze fell upon the fire scorched rabbit resting upon the charger, the meat already growing cold.
The sight made her stomach turn.
She swallowed hard, fighting down the sudden urge to be sick.
The rabbits charred flesh reminded her of what would have happened to her own body had Vincent not come to her aid.
The mare thought of it sent a chill down her spin.
She reached out, picked up the remains, and carried them outside. Without hesitation, she hurled the carcass as far away as she could, sending it into the overgrown brush that surrounded the neglected dwelling.
For a moment, she stood there in the chill morning air, staring at the place where it had disappeared.
Then she turned away, entering the small shelter one again.
Looking around she spied the pile of ragged clothing by the door. She picked up the shirt with its missing sleeve, the one Vincent had torn from the garment to bath her face the night before.
On impulse, she buried her nose into the faded fabric of the shirt inhaling deeply, the smell of the forest, mingled with Vincent's musky scent, the heady smell of him filled her lungs.
No. She reminded herself with regret, replacing the shirt on the top of the pile with care. Those were thoughts for other women, not for herself. He was a stranger to her, though a darkly handsome one she thought wistfully. One with piercing silver blue eyes, dark unruly hair, long lashes, and a strongly muscled body, but a stranger none the less. Eldra shook herself out of her reverie.
She held her hand before her face studying it closely, recalling the feeling akin to a lightning strike, that had coursed through her body when she had held Vincent's hand in her own for a brief moment by the fire.
His touch had been exhilarating.
She had encountered nothing like it before, and she could tell from his reaction that he had felt it as well.
The experience left her intrigued.
The fire, she realized!
How was it that his hand was not marked by the flames? Her brow furrowed in puzzlement.
Perhaps he had moved too quickly for the fire to burn his flesh, after all that could be the only explanation for it.
Though doubts lingered in her mind.
Eldra glanced around the room, then turned on her heels and walked out into the bright sunlit day.
She needed a long walk to clear her head, she told herself as she made her way along the narrow dirt path leading from the gloomy shelter behind her, and out into the autumn kissed trees of the forest.
* * *
Vincent kept to the deepest shadows of the forest once he left the small dwelling hidden away under the shelter of the trees.
Although sunlight was not a vampire's greatest friend it did not turn his kind to dust as the mortals believed.
It did however drain a vampire of their full strength, making them more vulnerable to fatal attack.
During his long life he had lost many brothers and sisters to the vampire hunters, who waited to attack when the strength sapping effects of the daylight hours were upon their victims.
Vincent wandered through the familiar landscape of the forest, until the rage began to subside within him.
The attack that Eldra had suffered at the hands of Johnas sickened him, and the woman had shown great courage in the confines of her cottages kitchen.
Her bravery in the midst of her ordeal had only increased his respect for the Eldra, whom he had left alone in the dwelling when he had fled into the trees for her safety.
He knew that he would inevitably have to return to the cramped shelter that he had made his home for more than sixty years.
He also knew that he would have to return to the woman who now shared his once solitary space with him, but for now he sat breathing in the calming stillness of the woods around him, further placating the beast within by draining a fawn that had wandered too close to where he sat beneath the oak.
Once he had fed, he recalled the unexpected feeling of lightning like attraction, that had passed between them as she had taken his hand by the hearth, and he could tell from her shocked expression that she had felt it as well.
He had never experienced such a strong connection with another being, neither as a mortal man or since his turning, and it puzzled him.
"What did it mean?" he asked himself. "What could it mean?"
He pondered the meaning as he sat beneath the spreading limbs of the nearly bare oak tree, the dead fawn lying in his lap.
She was just a mortal woman while he was an immortal, a vampire, a murderer, a monster, a creature who could not love nor be loved. A loathsome beast that, in her eyes, should she discover his true nature, would drive her from his home in horror and revulsion.
A sudden realization came unbidden to his mind, that if she fled he would miss her.
No, he told himself, there could never be anything between them.
"The sooner she was safely away the better," he growled.
Vincent's thoughts turned to the imminent danger of Johnas, and the men from the village who followed him. He knew that with Johnas' over riding desire for revenge that he would eventually gather them to search the forest for Eldra, finding her hidden within his home.
They would then collect whatever weapons they had to hand to hunt Eldra, and himself down like dogs.
They may already be preparing for just such an assault, as he sat contemplating a future with Eldra that could never to be.
With that he rose to his feet, leaving the fawn amongst the gold, and red leaves beneath the oak.
He turned toward home.
Toward the woman waiting within.
And toward a danger he could no longer ignore
* * *
Vincent was correct about one thing. As he had sat under the oak tree in the vast forest, Johnas's bloodlust, his need for revenge was growing stronger with every passing moment.
Johnas had gathered the men from the night before in a back room of the tavern that sat in the middle of the marketplaces bustling square.
The men looked from one to another, then to Johnas where he stood at the front of the room.
"Last night," Johnas began." a witch escaped into the forest beyond this very village. She may have slipped away but she still holds power in the village. Her curse is still strong, working against all of the good people who live, and work here." His voice gathering strength as he continued.
"You have seen what her potions, and powders have done to those poor, lost children that she poisoned" Johnas exclaimed, his voice full of bile.
"We cannot let the witch live! We must gather our weapons, march into the forest, recapture the witch, and burn her. Releasing the grip of the evil she has brought to our village, before more children fall victim to her evil curse!" Johnas finished, his eyes blazing.
The crowd of men exchanged nervous glances before one man from the back of the stuffy room, spoke up nervously.
" Johnas," he hesitated "the witch was spirited away by Satan himself. You were there. You saw it. What can we do against the power of the Devil?"
Johnas snorted derisively at the man.
"Yes, I was there," Johnas replied, with conviction in his voice, "there was no devil, you fools allowed her to break free! You turned your eyes away for a moment while she made good her escape under the cover of darkness, on a moonless night!"
The men started to object, but Johnas stopped the protestations dead.
"If the witch escaped she escaped using her own guile, not by being whisked away by some unseen Demon!" Johnas stated emphatically.
The men sat silently, a look of disbelief on their collective faces. Could Johnas be right?
Had the witch slipped away without even one man noticing her escape?
Could her sudden disappearance be explained as a moments lapse in judgment? They asked themselves.
Some of the men looked away in shame, while yet others, who held stronger convictions, began to murmur amongst themselves.
Finally one brave man amongst them stood up.
"Johnas!" he exclaimed. "I wer a watchin the healer woman the whole time! She wer standing right next to me and then wer gone in a flash. How do ye explain that?!" His voice rising in defiance.
The crowd that was crammed into the backroom of the tavern began to shift around uncomfortably as their whispers grew into a roar.
Johnas raised his hands to quiet the room.
"My dear friends please, I beg you, quieten down." He asserted.
If he lost the help of these men, he would lose any hope of finding Eldra. Any hope of exacting his revenge on her, and whomever had helped her to escape. He frantically searched his mind for an argument that would turn these backwards, superstitious fools to his will.
Finally, his mind grasped on to an idea.
"My dear friends, pray please, settle down" He pleaded, though the weakness in his voice sickened him.
"I spent many hours last evening scouring through the books in the library of my home. There I happened upon a book written during the witch hunts, that held the case of a witch using dark magic, who escape the Witch Finders clutches, much as happened here last evening. The book described a witch who had evaded the Witch Finder General for many years. A powerful Dark Witch." He emphasized.
"They finally employed the use of a heavy iron chain, specially forged, and blessed by the local parish priest to ensnare her, bringing her to her final destruction. Eldra has proved herself to be a powerful dark witch before us all. What I propose to recapture the witch is what the witch finders had done. We have Mathew the village smithy, to forge a strong chain of purest iron to ensnare her, and drag the witch back, burning her, and finally ridding our fair village of her curse once and for all!" Johnas's voice raised in triumphant vigor, as he looked around the room at the now silent crowd before him.
When Johnas finished his speech the room became as a living thing, with all the men stamping their feet in unison and rising to gather around him all shouting in agreement, shaking hands, and clapping each other on their backs.
Johnas smiled as the men jostled him from left to right, and narrowed his piggish eyes.
It had worked!
His plan had worked!
Now there was nothing left to do but have the smithy, get to work on the chain that would finally drag Eldra to her doom.
* * *
Some of the village men who had been at the meeting stayed behind drinking at The Wolf And Lamb, long after Johnas had departed. They gathered round the bar discussing Johnas's plans to search the forest for the healer woman.
Many were of the opinion that the woman had surely fled to greener pastures by now, and good riddance to her as far as they were concerned. While still others had heard tell of a revenant with burning red eyes that moved within the deepest reaches of the forest.
Many a poacher had found a full grown buck with its neck ripped open, the animal's body drained of all its blood, leaving the brute where it had fallen with not a drop of blood spilled upon the debris that blanketed the forest floor.
If it had been a bear or even a pack of wolves that had taken down the beast the animals would have torn the buck to pieces, leaving the ground soaked with its blood and internal organs.
Albert, and his sister's man Ferdy, listened to the others talk, before taking their drinks to an empty table close by the tavern's door.
They possessed firsthand experience with the revenant that haunted the deeper parts of the forest. They had encountered the phantom themselves one moonless nigh some three years ago while setting fishing traps along the river banks.
The phantom had appeared from between the trees. A dark black mass with burning red eyes, that upon seeing the two terrified men, had pursued them from the river's edge and through the trees, moving with such preternatural speed that Ferdy had thought that they were both done for, as they crashed through the thick underbrush that clawed at their clothing and flesh.
Then as they stumbled out of the woodland into the field that marked the forest's boundary, the shadow ceased its pursuit.
Relief flooding through them as it fading back into the darkness, as if it had never been.
Albert, and Ferdy had never returned for their traps in fear for their lives. Better to lose a few fish than their lives to whatever haunted the forest by the river, they both agreed.